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Unifying Science and Spirituality

Philosophy

I scandalized my philosophy professor (the great UC Berkeley professor JosephTussman) by interrupting his listing of the professions that a philosophy major might pursue. He began “Law, Business…” and I broke in “…and Physics!” The assertion was formed in physics classes where so many students treated the subject matter as engineering: the application of mathematical methods to predict system behavior.

When asked to explain “why” the theories were the way that they are, many physicists respond “because they explain the world,” without realizing how deeply theoreticians are corralled by abstract principles such as “gage invariance.” Without such grounding in abstract principles, science is as susceptible to fads, group-think and self-interest as religion and politics.

Philosophy, which has spawned so many other fields of knowledge over the centuries, still persists in the rather unique goal of teaching people to think meaningfully about the fundamental human questions. If we can’t avoid the influence of fads, group-think and self-interest in leading us away from truth, as least we can be conscious of their danger, and recognize when a coherent alternative is being represented. These are universal concerns, and our current political discourse is proof of our failure to heed the wisdom of the great humanist philosophers of the past.

Although of course, as concerns philosophers, “great” is predicated by the fellow-concern of “humanism,” to the degree that Jesus and Buddha are sometimes adopted into the community of philosophers.

The posts that follow are valuable in that the document my intellectual journey to the final post “In Coherence,” in which I humbly propose a model for the philosophical program that we have struggled with for so long. (The word “humbly” is not gratuitous: I recognize that much of what I write here has been revealed to me by what Christians would call the “Holy Spirit”: the repository of ideas that have taken root in love – ideas that hold that citizenship only because they correlate with truth.) The challenge, simply put, is to create intellectual barriers to the three vices listed above. To those seeking a comprehensive exploration of the principles that I have applied in attaining whatever wisdom has been granted me, it is at my web site, www.everdeepening.org.